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I just noticed that Mark Schmidt has a new version of WFPad available. If you’ve never tried WFPad, you should download it immediately and give it a try. It is the WF equivalent of XamlPad (for WPF). It hosts the WF designers to visually let you work with workflow markup files. But it has two features that I really like:

It shows you the workflow model in the WF designer and as markup (xaml) in two separate, sync-able windows. This is a great way to learn WF markup. You can use the designer to change the WF model and then view the results as markup.

It lets you load and view an existing workflow from a .xoml file OR from an assembly (exe, dll). This is a great way to gain visibility into your compiled workflows without warming up Visual Studio.

In chapter 17 of my WF book, I present a custom designer that allows you to create and maintain markup-only (no-code) workflows. While I obviously recommend taking a look at my designer, I must admit that there is much to like in WFPad as well.

I attended the Atlanta code camp on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed it. The organizers did a great job of bringing in some interesting speakers and providing a good variety of subject matter. Now that my WF book is all but complete, it was nice to have a free weekend to attend something like this.

I will definitely plan on attending this event again next year. Perhaps next year I’ll try to present something on WF.

I completed my first book .NET 2.0 Interoperability Recipes back in March of 2006. At the time, I planned on posting to this blog with interesting information related to .NET interop. However, instead, I immediately embarked on another book, ProWF: Windows Workflow in .NET 3.0. Now that this book is in the final stages (available Feb 19, 2007), I’m ready to give this blog a go once again.

The focus of this blog will now include Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) as well as .NET interop.